Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is facing yet another scandal over a series of embellishments and inaccuracies, this time related to the beginning of his political career.
During his 2006 campaign, Walz claimed in his biography that he was named “Outstanding Young Nebraskan” by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993 for his contributions to education, the military, and small business. However, this assertion was quickly debunked. Barry Kennedy, the then-president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, clarified in a letter to Walz that no such award had been granted to him. Despite this, the false claim lingered on his campaign website before being quietly removed.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that Kennedy asked that Walz remove the reference from his website and noted that the Chamber had endorsed his opponent, Gil Gutknecht, the Republican incumbent who’d held the seat since 1995. Kennedy could not be reached for comment and the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment.
Walz’s campaign manager at the time said he’d in fact won an award from the Junior Chamber of Commerce, according to a report in Minnesota’s Alpha News, and attributed the mistake to a “typographical error.” The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
But Gutknecht, who lost to Walz that year, did speak to the Washington Free Beacon. “It fits a pattern of misleading and fabricated statements he has made throughout his political and personal life,” he recalled. “All political figures are guilty of a bit of puffery. He frequently went well beyond that into prevarication.”
Since he was chosen to run beside Harris, Walz has had to clean up lie after lie, starting with the misrepresentation of his military service. Initially, Walz claimed to be a “retired command sergeant major,” but he never completed the training needed to rise to that rank.
Adding to the controversies, Walz’s narrative about his children’s conception through in vitro fertilization (IVF) was also called into question. Walz has often referenced his family’s fertility struggles to connect with voters, stating that his children were conceived through IVF and using that “fact” to attack J.D. Vance. However, it was later revealed by his wife to be another lie.
Over the past six weeks, Walz has seen his credibility crumble. It begs the question: If a guy will lie about the smallest, most insignificant things on his resume, why should anyone trust him when he talks about the important ones?
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